Brown Bag Workshops, Fall 2008
(in Humanities shared faculty lounge)
Wed. 10/15--Ron Overton:
"The I-Search Essay"
Wed. 10/22--Astrid Wimmer:
"An Option for Teaching Analysis: The Zones Workshop"
Wed. 11/5--Richard Buch:
"Writing Across the Curriculum: Making the Connection"
Wed. 11/12--Rita Nezami:
"Bringing Visual Rhetoric to the Classroom"
Electronic Writing Classrooms
The Program in Writing and Rhetoric conducts some of its courses in computer classrooms (EWCs). One of the EWCs (Humanities 2046) contains 26 Dell computers; the other (SBS, room S-316) has 22. Both serve as classrooms for WRT and Journalism classes during the fall, spring and summer semesters. For both labs, we post monthly calendars, indicating the specific days and times that the labs have been reserved for class sessions.
As a Classroom
Most of the teachers conduct their classroom activities using Blackboard, a web-based program that creates online classroom environments and provides organizational tools for teachers along with research tools for students. Teachers enjoy several organizational utilities, including the ability to post assignments and compact online discussions into single text documents. Blackboard, moreover, allows students to:
- participate in real-time conferences focusing on issues that pertain to their paper topics (Virtual Class) in and out of class;
- receive and respond to messages on discussion boards generated by the teacher and other students, in and out of class;
- deliver texts to their teacher and receive texts and responses in a Digital Dropbox
- view assignments and class information in and out of class
- connect to Internet sites on topics pertaining to the class (External Links)
- set up teams and groups for collaborative learning
- set up and use a Course Journal (a collaborative blog) to share information and experiences or develop fluency
- monitor their course progress via Gradebook
As a SINC Site
Humanities 2046 has public SINC site hours during the early evening, Monday through Thursday. For a current schedule, see the Instructional Computing website.
Computer Access
Users need to log into the computer stations with NET ID and password. More information on the NET ID may be obtained through SOLAR. The same information is needed to print to the PHAROS station (also available in both classrooms). More information on printing is available from the Instructional Computing website.
Using the SB drive, disks and Flash Drives in the EWCs
To save your data, you may use High-Density or Zip disks in the EWCs (or a USB-connective Flash Drive). The USB drive may be connected in the port under the flap on the front of the tower (CPU). If you use a Double Density disk, your chances of losing data and damaging your disk are much high, and many of the newer machines reject the disks outright. You may also use 100-MG zip disks in these computers.
As of 2006, users may store files on their personal SB drive when logged in with their NET ID. This is the preferred method for saving larger files. From the SB drive, files may be moved through FTP, e-mail, or to disk or flash drive. More information is available from Instructional Computing: My SB files.